May 1, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Acts 8:5-8,14-17 + 1 Peter 3:15-18 + John 14:15-21
“Notebook” is the name of a movie released this past year that drifted through my mind as I sat with these verses of John’s Gospel through the past week. Sometimes the complexity, the developing theology, the profound and unique Christology of John’s Gospel
allows us all to slip past the simplicity and sheer poetry of the verses. Had I not watched that film one evening with these verses of John’s Gospel fresh in my mind, I probably would have missed it altogether. These verses are really a poem for lovers.
They reflect a unique style of love rooted in intimacy and profound care. Those whose only experience of love is fleeting infatuation or sexual attraction will never get it; but those who have discovered in love the bonding of companionship and union recognize that these verses literally sing of union and peace of love and joy. This kind of love the poet John is writing about possess four qualities:
obedience, companionship, revelation and union.
Unfortunately in our culture and language, the word Obedience carries far too many meanings, because having lost our knowledge of the root of words we often fail to rediscover their authentic meaning.
In the context of Love, and religion for that matter, “Obedience” is not about following orders nearly as much as it is about listening, about the ability to be open to listen to the authentic invitations for life and respond in a way that is consistent with our own identity.
The root meaning, and so virtue of Obedience is about listening and responding.
Companionship heralds the authentic commitment of love. When there is love, there is commitment, and in this commitment, the focus is the other, their well-being, the desire to help them grow.
The miracle of this love is that two individuals who have first cared only for themselves and have seen themselves as individuals begin to protect, touch, and think only of another. Then in this authentic gospel love, there is revelation that means transparency and vulnerability based on trust. When someone discovers that they are cared for, they risk revealing more of themselves.
This love that Jesus speaks of to those who choose a life style fit for the Kingdom of God is inclusive. It is not experienced and expressed in the same depth by everyone, but it is seen in people joined together in obedience, companionship. They care for one another, and in that caring, God is revealed.
The love our poet writes of today is the love we find at the heart of our lives. Our knowledge of God and God’s love comes to us through our experience of love in creation; in the experience of loving and being loved by the other. Husbands and wives know this best of all, and for that reason, their experience of love is a Sacrament that reveals God’s love and makes them one with God.
Children know this love from their experience of loving parents
who give them the freedom to grow without fear because they are cared for, protected with a love that is truly sacrificial.
The wonder of God’s love is that it does not ask us to choose between God and the other. It asks us to choose God through the other. Our very ability to live in obedience, companionship, revelation and union with ourselves and others is founded on and strengthened by God’s love.
In the film, Notebook, a wife of many years suffers from dementia,
and she has lost all recognition of her loved ones except for brief moments when her memories are ignited by a loving spouse
who reads to her every day from his journal. There are brief and fleeting moments of recognition that give him reason to live in the nursing home with her, treasuring those memories and moments of “obedience” and companionship. This is a metaphor of God’s love for us, the story of God’s patient willingness to live with us,
to retell and to remember the story of our love over and over;
because from time to time we wake up and remember, restore and celebrate the covenant we have made and share.
The poem of this day’s Gospel speaks of that love, of the promise of presence in a relationship of obedience, companionship, revelation, and unity. For this love we have reason to rejoice today,to give thanks,because we are cared for and protected with a love that is truly sacrificial.